My first thought upon reading the news that Duke freshman Kyrie Irving was leaving school for the NBA was that the young man had made a smart decision. Sure, he might be able to improve his game and long-term prospects as a player by remaining in college for at least another year, but an injury already cost him all but 11 games this season. Another collegiate injury would severely hurt his draft stock, and there is a strong possibility that it would render him virtually undraftable. Irving is already considered a top 2 or 3 pick in the draft; his potential coming out of college would never be higher than it is today. One attends college to grow as an individual and to do what is necessary to maximize one’s market value to potential employers. After one season, Kyrie Irving has accomplished that. Professionally speaking, there is nothing left for the young man to accomplish at Duke. The time for him to leave is right now. He made the right decision, and I am happy for him.
But my second thought was that I wouldn’t draft Kyrie Irving. That has nothing to do with him leaving school after just one season. Had Irving remained at Duke for four year, won 3 national championships, and 3 Naismith Awards, I still wouldn’t draft him. That has nothing to do with Irving’s character or ability. Nope. Irving’s biggest basketball flaw is that he played on a high school team coached by Kevin Boyle.
Before we get to Boyle, some background…
One day last week someone brought up the Pistons-Heat Eastern Conference Finals of 2005. Whenever I think about that series, I don’t think about Dwyane Wade’s injury. Instead, I think about the fourth quarter of Game 7 and how the Heat blew the game on two possessions near the end of the game. Miami trailed by two points with about three and a half minutes left, and Shaquille O’Neal made an apparent decision to take over the game. He established himself in the post and demanded the ball. Ben Wallace fouled him and Shaq converted both free throws to tie the game. After a defensive stop, O’Neal demanded the ball again and gave Miami the lead by hitting a basket. The Heat held Detroit scoreless again. On the ensuing possession, Miami had a chance to make it a two-possession game. Again, O’Neal planted himself in the post and demanded the ball. Damon Jones passed the ball into the post, but Shaq wanted to get a little closer. He passed it back to Jones and attempted to repost, but Jones instead swung it around the perimeter. Tayshaun Prince stole the ball and Richard Hamilton scored to tie the game again. When Miami got the ball back, they fed Shaq in the post and he drew another foul on Wallace. He converted one of two to put the Heat up by one. Two free throws put Detroit back up by one, and instead of feeding O’Neal in the post again, Dwyane Wade came down and rushed a long jump shot before most of his teammates had made it down the court. Detroit scored again and the game was essentially over. I will always feel that Miami would have won that game had they fed Shaq on those two possessions that ended with Damon Jones’ turnover and Wade’s missed long jumper.
Because of the way my brain works, that led me to thinking about Game 7 of the NBA Finals between Detroit and San Antonio. The fourth quarter began with the two teams tied, and I thought to myself that Detroit would win if they continually fed Rasheed Wallace in the post. I knew that wasn’t going to happen though. As it turned out, no Piston other than Rasheed scored until 8:35 had ticked off the clock in that quarter. The Spurs were up by six points by then. Rasheed was 3-4 in the quarter up to that point, but it wasn’t enough. Detroit never caught up, and I will always believe that Detroit lost that game because they didn’t learn the lesson of why Miami had failed against them. They didn’t feet Rasheed like they should have, and Rasheed didn’t demand the ball like he should have.
But I knew not to expect that out of Rasheed Wallace. I had been watching him play since he was in the tenth grade at Simon Gratz High School in North Philly. At Gratz, Wallace was coached by Bill Ellerbe, a coach I found to be stylistically and philosophically closer to John Chaney than any other coach I’ve ever seen. Like Chaney, Ellerbe is a coach who believed that the guards should do all of the ball handling and an overwhelming majority of the shooting. He wanted his big guys to always defer to the guards. When I saw Gratz lose to Franklin Learning Center in the 1992 Public League Championship Game, I came away thinking that Rasheed would never, ever dominate even though he had the talent to do so. I can’t tell you how many times he was wide open for 12-foot baseline jumpers in that game, but I can tell you he only took one of them (he made it). The normal routine was for him to hold the ball above his head and pass it out to point guard Reds Smith. That’s why Wallace only averaged 16 points per game as a senior. He was the national player of the year because all the scouts could see his talent, but he didn’t even lead his high school team in scoring or shot attempts per game.
Rasheed wasn’t going to ever dominate in college or the NBA because Ellerbe coached that out of his game. That messed up his game for his entire career. I will always believe that is why we never saw Rasheed Wallace exploit his post game and become a Hall of Fame power forward.
Chaney and Ellerbe are coaches who are good at getting the most out of players with low and average levels of talent. But they coach the same way when they have the best players, and I believe that hurts those highly talented players. For every Aaron McKie and Mardy Collins that Chaney sent to the NBA, there was a Mark Macon or Lamont Barnes, really good players who got worse every year under the coach’s tutelage.
Most high school coaches have little effect on the long-term games of NBA-level players. Others help. Some are really, really detrimental. And because I was thinking about that Miami-Detroit game and the San Antonio-Detroit game, I started to think about other high school coaches who mess up their players. At the top of my list is Kevin Boyle.
Once I found out the Kyrie Irving went to St. Patrick’s I realized that he is someone I would never draft. I’ve seen enough of Kevin Boyle and I’ve seen enough of his players. He sends a lot of players to high level Division I schools and the NBA because he was able to recruit New Jersey’s best players to his school. But he is the most hotheaded and spastic basketball coach I have ever seen. A quick look at some of his former players (Al Harrington, Samuel Dalembert, and Derrick Caracter, to name a few) is to look at a list of some the most brain farting and frustrating players in college and NBA ball in the past 15 years. (As I write this, I’m surprised he lost J.R. Smith to St. Benedict’s.)
I haven’t seen any of that out of Kyrie Irving—or Dexter Strickland, for that matter—but I don’t trust Kevin Boyle. I’d sign Irving or any of Boyle’s other players as a free agent after watching them play in the league for a few years, but I wouldn’t draft any of them, especially not at or near the top of the draft.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Myth of the Best
Last night, I got into a debate on Twitter. My tweet that sparked said debate reads, “A 9th place conference team playing for the national championship hurts the credibility of the sport.” What I mean by that statement is that the college basketball regular season is rather meaningless when it comes to determining the national champion. Connecticut, who finished tied for 9th place in the Big East, and Butler will play for the NCAA Men’s Basketball national championship tomorrow night. If you believe either of these teams is among the fifteen best in the nation, I have serious doubts about how much college basketball you know and watch.
But that is my point here. The NCAA tournament is fun and exciting; and the primary reason for that is the high level of unpredictability. From day to day, game to game, and half to half, we really have no idea what is going to happen. These games are played by teenagers and early twenty-somethings whose emotions are on a rollercoaster. We never know for sure what we’re going to get. It’s wonderful. That’s why it’s one of the most popular sporting events in America. But les us all go into it without the illusion that this tournament is about determining who is the country’s best college basketball team. Being the best team and being the champion are two things that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The NCAA tournament is a crapshoot. We see it every year. A team can get hot for a few games and make a deep run. Often, the two or three best teams are beaten before they even reach the Final Four. All we remember are the Final Four and the national champion. What does the regular season mean? What relevance does that long grind hold?
But it’s not just college basketball. Major League Baseball and NHL hockey also hold crapshoot postseason tournaments. Once you get in, anything can happen. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I’m just calling it what it is. Let’s not pretend that it’s the best team and not the team with the hottest goaltender and peaking sniper who holds up the Stanley Cup. And let us not pretend that a hot pitcher and one hot hitter aren’t the determining factor in winning the World Series.
Some people may—and have—brought up the fact that the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl as the 6th seed in the NFC playoffs. My counter is this: how many times during the past decade have you thought a mediocre team played in the Super Bowl? I give you the 2008 Cardinals. That’s it. Plus, injuries affect NFL teams’ playoff seeding more than they do teams in any other sport. Scheduling also greatly affects seeding. In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how the schedule often provides the wrong teams with playoff byes. Sure, there are upsets in the NFL playoffs, but more often than not, road teams winning is a righting of the ship that was thrown off course by inflated records. And, yes, I believe the ridiculous scheduling formula diminishes the meaning of the NFL regular season, but it still does mean something.
The best of seven NBA playoffs are the realest playoffs around. Only once every decade or so do you ever leave the playoffs with the feeling that the best team did not win the championship. That’s why, in a sport when the best players don’t often change teams, only a few select players have led their teams to championships.
In college football, it’s often too hard to figure out who the best team is. But the NCAA doesn’t try to fool us. They neither award nor acknowledge a Division I-FBS champion. The playoff proponents often yell out the spiel that we deserve to see who the best team is. What a crock. A playoff won’t do that for these people any more than the bowls will.
When interviewers question underdogs about their ability to win, they often ask if they believe they are better than the favorite. I’ve always found it to be a stupid question. They don’t have to be better; they just have to win. And that’s championships are about. You don’t have to be the best; you just have to win.
To bring this back to college basketball, let me close by saying that I enjoy the tournament. I hope I enjoy the Connecticut-Butler game tomorrow night. But the tournament allows 68 teams in. It’s moving toward 96 teams (I happen to be in favor of the expansion to 96). But you have to understand that every team added to the tournament further diminishes the meaning of the regular season. The more teams involved, especially when teams are eliminated after one defeat, the less likely it is you’ll see one of the top teams win it all. The belief that we are crowning college basketball’s best team is just a myth. We’re crowning the champion. That’s it. Just the champion. Don’t make it out to be anything more than that.
But that is my point here. The NCAA tournament is fun and exciting; and the primary reason for that is the high level of unpredictability. From day to day, game to game, and half to half, we really have no idea what is going to happen. These games are played by teenagers and early twenty-somethings whose emotions are on a rollercoaster. We never know for sure what we’re going to get. It’s wonderful. That’s why it’s one of the most popular sporting events in America. But les us all go into it without the illusion that this tournament is about determining who is the country’s best college basketball team. Being the best team and being the champion are two things that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The NCAA tournament is a crapshoot. We see it every year. A team can get hot for a few games and make a deep run. Often, the two or three best teams are beaten before they even reach the Final Four. All we remember are the Final Four and the national champion. What does the regular season mean? What relevance does that long grind hold?
But it’s not just college basketball. Major League Baseball and NHL hockey also hold crapshoot postseason tournaments. Once you get in, anything can happen. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I’m just calling it what it is. Let’s not pretend that it’s the best team and not the team with the hottest goaltender and peaking sniper who holds up the Stanley Cup. And let us not pretend that a hot pitcher and one hot hitter aren’t the determining factor in winning the World Series.
Some people may—and have—brought up the fact that the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl as the 6th seed in the NFC playoffs. My counter is this: how many times during the past decade have you thought a mediocre team played in the Super Bowl? I give you the 2008 Cardinals. That’s it. Plus, injuries affect NFL teams’ playoff seeding more than they do teams in any other sport. Scheduling also greatly affects seeding. In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how the schedule often provides the wrong teams with playoff byes. Sure, there are upsets in the NFL playoffs, but more often than not, road teams winning is a righting of the ship that was thrown off course by inflated records. And, yes, I believe the ridiculous scheduling formula diminishes the meaning of the NFL regular season, but it still does mean something.
The best of seven NBA playoffs are the realest playoffs around. Only once every decade or so do you ever leave the playoffs with the feeling that the best team did not win the championship. That’s why, in a sport when the best players don’t often change teams, only a few select players have led their teams to championships.
In college football, it’s often too hard to figure out who the best team is. But the NCAA doesn’t try to fool us. They neither award nor acknowledge a Division I-FBS champion. The playoff proponents often yell out the spiel that we deserve to see who the best team is. What a crock. A playoff won’t do that for these people any more than the bowls will.
When interviewers question underdogs about their ability to win, they often ask if they believe they are better than the favorite. I’ve always found it to be a stupid question. They don’t have to be better; they just have to win. And that’s championships are about. You don’t have to be the best; you just have to win.
To bring this back to college basketball, let me close by saying that I enjoy the tournament. I hope I enjoy the Connecticut-Butler game tomorrow night. But the tournament allows 68 teams in. It’s moving toward 96 teams (I happen to be in favor of the expansion to 96). But you have to understand that every team added to the tournament further diminishes the meaning of the regular season. The more teams involved, especially when teams are eliminated after one defeat, the less likely it is you’ll see one of the top teams win it all. The belief that we are crowning college basketball’s best team is just a myth. We’re crowning the champion. That’s it. Just the champion. Don’t make it out to be anything more than that.
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